The Last Days (Redux)
by Morgul-squirrel
Summary: Sometimes you can't choose your enemies. Sometimes you can't choose your heroes. Sometimes your greatest enemy is your greatest hero-not the one that you wanted, but the one that you needed. Either way it was too little too late. In the end everything was broken.
1. Prologue

**Author's Note: And so it begins. I hope this story will prove to have been worth the wait.**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own.**

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 **Prologue**

Without name, without substance, houseless, friendless, timeless, worthless, homeless, and accursed, the dark cloud was pulled between the hills by the ever whimsical wind, and the cloud hated it.

Hated it.

Hated everything.

Hated and hated.

Beyond the point of reason, or endurance-beyond the point pain and its own comprehension it hated still. Hate was all it had when it wasn't wracked by pain and longing for things it couldn't understand.

This was its lot in life after a series of choices. After caring so much it had ruined its own life, fallen from the greatest height into the darkest depths to build, to organize, to save-this was the price of compassion. This was the payment owed for having cared in the first place.

He was villain, the Great Evil, and he didn't know why, only that that had been how they'd looked to him. And he hated them all for it, every last one of them. But he couldn't even remember who they were anymore, only that they were not him, and they had never deserved his care in the first place.

Then the hatred gave way as it was wont to do. It was a great reason to live, when nothing else of value remained, but it burned out eventually when the cloud no longer had the energy to sustain its fury and loathing.

The pain returned then, slow burning and ruthless. Belligerent and agonizing it welled up from some unknown depth until the cloud was drowning in its own darkness. It didn't understand why or how. It couldn't. It didn't want to.

A voice, vaporous and thin begged and pleaded for an end, but the cruel world heard him naught. It never had. It had forsaken him long before he'd known the wisdom in forsaking it. By the time he'd figured it out it was too late, and he'd lost everything, save for the one thing he had never wanted: the name that festered in the back of his mind oozing filth that seeped into crevice of his being and cloaked him in his failure.

 _Sauron._

More than anything else he hated that name and yet it was all the remained of him. All that had been was tied to that name, and that name to him, but still he rebuked it, shied away from it, and denied it and its hideousness. Embracing it meant admitting he was exactly what it claimed him to be. He was not that. Never that. It was abhorrent.

There had to be other names- other reasons, other identities that were better. There had to be. He was almost positive there had been. Sometimes when insanity wasn't wracking his mind like the horrid tremors that tore his smoky essence, when anguish indescribable wasn't tearing him apart he could see fleeting pictures and hear far off voices. In those rare moments of quiet he could almost remember. He could feel those names squirming in the recesses of his mind.

But true recollection he feared as much as he feared the emptiness of his broken memory. Through that understanding laid a risk of far greater pain what he already suffered. And he had experienced far too much already.

' _Please.'_ His voice was snatched by the cruel breeze tugging him over the grass. _'No more.'_

Only the sound of the zephyr teasing at his formless spirit answered him.

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 **For those who are familiar with my Q &A I will be continuing that here. **

**The rules are a bit different. You can ask as many questions as you want. They'll be posted at the end of the next chapter I put up.**

 **Questions deemed too spoilery will not be posted, though if you beg, plead, and grovel I might answer them in a private PM.**


	2. Meaningless Words

**Author's Note: Introducing my OC. Don't worry Sauron will be back eventually. Their stories will intersect soon. I just have to get there.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't own.**

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 **Meaningless Words**

"Gondor is in shambles."

"Gondor deserves to be."

The words fell out before they'd been thought over and the silence that fell over the dinner table was deafening and tense.

Linaer refused to look up at her uncle. She had never been able to look at him. He looked so much like her father that it hurt, but the stark differences in their personalities hurt her all the more. She had never been good words. They shot out, blatantly honest and unfiltered, or her tongue fumbled them and they fell awkwardly from her lips, but her father had always been patient enough to wait for further explanation. Her uncle was not. And she felt the cold glare over the wine glass, the way she felt the scratchy wooden chair leg against her own as trembled restlessly.

 _We destroyed the Dark Lord, and spent the next several centuries massacring Easterlings and partying. We became lazy and forgot to keep a vigil on our enemies too high from our great victory. And while we were drinking and feasting corrupt politicians slithered in and ruined everything._

 _It's their greed and lack of foresight that's killing us. They sell their own arsenal to their enemies and watch their own civilians get butchered by those enemies for a profit. We had it coming. It was only a matter of time before a villain seized the moment and turned our foolishness against us._

"You dare to speak ill when we're at war?!" He growled. "You dare!" The wine glass shook, wines sloshing over the side, staining his hand and table bloody red.

Across from her, her cousin Arannel lifted his own glass to his lips, and drained it. Beside him his twin Golasgil, grabbed the nearest bottle and pulled it closer, never once looking away from their father.

"You're the daughter of a ranger!"

Linaer flinched, chest tightening. Better than most she understood what her father had been. He'd a hero, a protector in the night; hunting and orcs and Black Cloaks keeping the roads safe, and then he went out on a scouting mission and had never returned.

 _I know he was a ranger. That's not what this is about._

Linaer had never been able to communicate with her uncle, and it was made all the worse by his disapproval of her. She was the spoiled child, doted on by an over indulgent father, who had had given her too much freedom too soon, so that now, when she was older, she was too boyish, too wild, too housebound, too shy, too stubborn, too defiant, and too much like her savage ancestors from Harad- unfit to marry, unfit to be a mother, unfit for much of what life had to offer because she wasn't 'proper woman of Gondor.'

Tainted. That's what he thought. On some lever they all probably thought that she was. Her skin was darker than theirs: the same light brown as her hair. She stood out like a sore thumb, among her own people: too dark to be a proper Gondorian.

But then she couldn't pass for a true Haradrim either. Her nose was too sharp and her eyes were blue-proof that somewhere in her veins there was a thimble of Numenorean and Gondorian blood in her after all.

Harad was blamed for Gondor's mess, and she was caught in the middle of a culture war unsure of what or who she wanted to be. Embracing both at once was not an option, because people were touchy, and both parties would be affronted by her the affinity for the other, as if it were some sort of insult to be proud of one's full heritage.

Her tongue itched with unspoken words as her mind raced.

"There is a Dark Lord in Harad- his militant black cloaked followers are running rampant across the land, burning villages to the ground, dragging prisoners back into the desert to be thrown into a fire pit, and you say they deserve it."

"It's like Numenor all over again-" Golasgil was cut off by his father's glare, and all eyes fell on Linaer.

Uncomfortably Linaer bit her lip, unsure of herself now that she was the centre of attention. Words were hard, and under scrutiny, faced with anger and disappointment from multiple sources made them stick in her throat until it hurt.

 _The people don't deserve it. The country does. Gil's right: it is like Numenor. Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it._

"Herumor isn't why we're in this mess." The words shook as they fell. They were not what she had wanted to say, and her uncle's anger was suddenly tangible because of them.

A growl rippled from her his throat, but his voice was soft and coated in the blackest ice when he finally hissed, "Get out."

Wordlessly she rose and left, leaving a horrible silence in her wake.

 _That's not what I meant._

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 ** _Author's Note: I'll be keeping the chapter's fairly short. It makes them easier to write, and it'll hopefully make updates more frequent? I hope._**

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 **And I'm also doing this thing. It's a Q &A. Basically, every person is allowed to ask the characters or the writer questions. **

**The rules for this are simple:**

 **1\. You can ask as many questions as you like. ((They help inspire me, and they give me a chance to toy with the characterization of the characters.))**

 **2\. In you're review put a little 'Q &A' over the questions so I'll know they're supposed to be posted at the end of the following chapter.**

 **3\. Only characters who have been introduced in the story may be asked a question. (Sorry, but Morgoth is currently in the Void and unable to speak with anyone at this time.)**

 **4\. Multiple characters may be addressed in a single question.**

 **5\. There is a potential risk for spoilers depending on the nature of the questions that have been asked. Some people love spoilers, some people hate them. If I decide a question is too spoilery I will answer it privately but it will not be posted here.**

 **6\. All questions and answers will be anonymously posted at the end of the next chapter.**

 **7\. I will not answer repeat questions. (I'll be keeping track of all the questions and their chapters, so that I can point people toward them.)**

 **8\. Don't hassle me about the questions. (Hassle me about updates, please. But not the questions.)**

 **I thought I'd try this because I thought it'd be fun for you (and me), and it might encourage me to update faster. If this works out I'd like to continue doing this for the rest of the fic, or as long as you all are interested. No one is obligated to do this, nor does anyone have to continue asking questions if they don't want to. And this _will not_ be a first-come/first-served deal. Everyone who asks a questions will get them answered. **

**So ask your questions.**


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